BRICS summit
By doubling its number of members, from five to eleven in one quick sweep, the BRICS grouping has strengthened its position as a global grouping to be reckoned with. In addition, the choice of countries, bringing in four major players from the ‘Middle East region’: Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE, apart from Ethiopia and Argentina from Africa and South America, is significant, as it denotes a shift in the non-western economic grouping’s underpinnings, to make it a more politically relevant bloc.
Chief amongst the messages the BRICS has sent out is that despite misgivings and even mockery of the cohesion in the grouping in the west, it is an attractive club for members of the Global South. BRICS founders chose from 22 countries that formally applied for BRICS membership, and more than 40 in all that have evinced interest in the group. The message that the summit and the BRICS expansion took place despite the U.S. and Europe’s moves to “isolate” Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, and to push for an ICC international warrant that prevented Russian President Vladimir Putin from travelling to Johannesburg would not be lost on the Western bloc either.
